Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Being Human (US), Season 3, Episode 3: The Teens They Are A Changin'




Nora is sat on a park bench with Daddy Pure Bred (there is no way I’m going to get through this series without calling him “Pedigree” at least once) not entirely happy with him locking himself in with her last night, coming at her, bleeding, ripping the door open with his teeth. He puts it down to being wolves. He wouldn’t hurt her – she’s the closest thing he has to Brynn left. Besides, only humans are suicidal and Nora’s more wolf than that; and it would be a terrible thing to turn on your own anyway. Uh-huh, I think that’s Nora’s guilty face.

She returns to the house to find Josh and Sally panicking and calling round the hospitals. Nora and Josh hug and she tells him about Pedigree Wolf.

Aidan, meanwhile, is trying to solve the pesky blood supply problem. He finds a guy, befriends him, takes him into an alley for Henry to snack on… and the guy sneezes. Henry instantly sends the guy on his way. Aidan says it could have been just a cold but Henry won’t have it – Aidan didn’t have to see everyone he knows die from this plague. And he’s not thrilled about having to talk to someone for weeks, befriend them before they can put them on the possible donor list – especially since Aidan won’t let him return to past donors too often for fear of the compulsion burning out their brain. Also, he’s still bitter about Aidan letting his slave go. But Aidan won’t tolerate slavery –nor will he let his son, no matter how angry and pouty he gets.

Sally, stress eating, is panicking about killing Trent and wondering what she’s going to do since she has no identity and may kill people. And she wants to go to Trent’s memorial to see if he has a ghost and she can see it and comfort him. Josh is there to comfort her, but also to lay on some common sense – like not going to Trent’s memorial where half of her classmates could be and end up “slaughtering half her year book”.  He also stresses about her eating junk food (I love the friend interactions like this) and confesses he needs more “normal” in his life if he’s supposed to feel comfortable enough to ask Nora to marry him. She leaves, taking a ton of junk food with her to Josh’s exasperation. And to Aidan’s amusement.

Aidan wants a favour; he needs Josh, when working in admissions, to ask patients if they had the flu. Josh isn’t happy with the idea of labelling people for Henry and Aidan to then drain, especially since he remembers the two women Aidan and Henry killed last season. Aidan promises it won’t happen but Josh isn’t willing to put his job on the line or risk it.

Something Nora agrees with at work - but for a different reason. Since Josh is “no longer one of us” and has his humanity back, she thinks he should enjoy getting out of the supernatural world and not be dragged in again by Aidan. But when Nora leaves, Josh checks some patient files.

Sally goes to see Trent’s body in the morgue and his ghost his there watching her and his body. The ghost wistfully wishes he could speak to Sally one more time and she matter-of-factly says that he can (yes, I love how she said that).  She gives him her history of dying becoming a ghost and coming back (avoid limbo). He hits on the whole she was warned not to see anyone from her past and how that caused him to die and he is most displeased and calls her a “horrible, heartless bitch.” I strongly disapprove of the unnecessary misogynist language but can co-sign the horrible and the heartless part. A morgue attendant comes down at that point and tries to get Sally to leave while Trent snarks rather perfectly for her ears only.


Sally goes back to see Trent’s ghost, more snark follows and she tries to figure out what unresolved issue Trent has that is stopping his door appearing. He knows – he was making out with Sally when he should have been home with his fiancée. She’s briefly outraged before he points out that she’s the one who killed him. He wants to make things right with her, Candace, but obviously Sally can’t go to the funeral service to make it so.

They finally chose to have Sally go to the funeral and ask the undertaker to bring Candace to see her in a private room. Candace has little time for Sally’s made up story so Sally blurts out that Trent cheated on her (much to Trent’s ghost’s hurried editing). Candace breaks down in tears – because she’d been cheating on Trent for a year and she was consumed by guilt – it makes it better for her to know Trent also felt their relationship was wrong

The ghost Trent is really really unhappy now and leaves, not wanting to see Sally any more, rather understandably. But the undertaker, Max, comes to see Sally to semi-apologise for being so harsh while she was sneaking around and say how impressed he was that Sally put a look of joy on Candace’s face: he wished he could do the same.

Josh gets a new patient, a rather unhappy woman, at the hospital. She refuses to fill in part of the form, can’t fill in the rest (her parents’ contact details – though she says their meth dealer may know since he sees them more than she does) and describes how she was clawed by a large dog at the full moon.  She shows him the scratches and the claw marks are huge.

He talks to Nora about it – after getting her a hospital bed and arranging for a social worker. But they only have a day before she changes (they’re in the middle of the full moon).  Josh wants to tell her, but Nora was told before she became a werewolf and anticipating it was awful – she’d rather let her have the day before she has to confront it especially since, compared to her usual standard of living, bad hospital food, cable and her own room is a big step up.

Until Erin’s case worker shows up – grossly unsympathetic and calls Erin a “malingerer” and when Nora protests that she’s sick the social worker just throws it aside and says Nora’s been tricked.  She says that Erin has been in 27 homes in 2 years to which Erin angrily accuses her of dumping her with “holy rollers or bad touch brothers”. Nora says Erin is staying at the hospital and it is her call – all she has to do is make a few notes on the chart. The social worker leaves declaring Erin to be “their problem.”

Nora wants to bring Erin home and Josh is against it (full panicked flail) but Nora says Erin is very much like her. She did terrible things as a wolf because terrible things were done to her and Erin is going to change soon. Nora insists she needs someone who understand and helps – what other option do they have? (She gets angry when Josh pauses a little when she mentions putting Erin down as if he were actually considering it)

Henry continues to have trouble with his hunger and Aidan keeps giving him pep talks. It’s not enough to Henry and he goes to the hospital to look at patient files. Josh catches him and they argue. Henry accuses Josh of giving up on Aidan (despite Josh searching for an entire year) and that Josh looks at Aidan as some kind of nuisance to be dumped now he has his humanity back. He leaves with a parting shot that in 100 years Aidan won’t even remember Josh’s name. Henry is very distracted by all the blood in the hospital.

Josh leaves the hospital and meets Aidan who apologises for Henry – but confesses that Henry’s not wrong, they are getting desperate. Josh gives him the name and address of a patient who never had the flu – but stresses that he’s a nice guy and has a family to drive home the whole “don’t kill him” to Aidan. Aidan promises “catch and release”.

Except, when they get there, Henry launches himself at the guy and Aidan has to restrain him. And in doing so sees a black mark on Henry’s neck – he has the plague. Aidan tries to give Henry his blood since Atlee thought it was a cure – but it didn’t work on Atlee and Henry knows it won’t work. Aidan starts another pep talk and Henry won’t hear it. Too many people have believed in Aidan – Bishop, Suren, him – and it hasn’t worked. Everyone who loves Aidan dies (ouch. Please don’t send Aidan back to his hootie days!) Henry rapidly gets sicker and eventually leaves, refusing to die slowly to disease.

At the house Josh and Nora tell Erin she’s a werewolf. Which isn’t very believable – until they take out a recording of Josh turning that he made. Showing the pain and agony of a shift and the creature he turned into (which Josh described as feeling “like drying” but Nora described as feeling “amazing”. Now there’s some different view points). But Erin believes.

They take Erin out to the woods with the same changing kit that Josh used in season 1 – meat, change of clothes etc. And he confesses he doesn’t need a kit because he bashed in the skull of the man who turned him. Erin’s impressed and moves through the woods but Nora notices Josh is carrying a gun and confronts him about it. He protests that he doesn’t want to leave Nora alone – he tells her that maybe she is like Nora, abused and hurt – but maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s like Brynn (a werewolf who violently revelled in her nature). Nora agrees that maybe he should keep the gun.

They go into the woods and Nora talks to Erin through the early stages. Nora expects to change first - but Erin begins to change. We cut to Josh waiting in the car and we hear Nora scream for him and a werewolf attacks his car. He shakily points a gun at the wolf – but another werewolf tackles it before he can fire. They roll down the bank and Josh follows (whyyyy, did he go to the Elena Gilbert school of werewolf wrangling?). After a bit of snarling the werewolves smell each other, strop growling and rub their faces together (Josh just watches… move dinner!)

Aidan follows Henry outside where he sits against a building by the road. He talks about trying to live up at Aidan’s expectations but being unable to do so because Aidan expected him to be a good man – and he’s not, he’s a monster. A vampire. And so is Aidan

In the funeral parlour, Trent’s door arrives and he goes through into the light. And ends up in Donna’s soup kitchen. Yes the witch who raised Sally from the dead. Oops, here’s the small print. She shreds him with a cleaver, reducing him to dust. Which she then eats. Her eyes turn yellow and she becomes a lot younger. Eternal youth through ghost snacks!




I’m all kinds of torn over Josh refusing to help Aidan – but I think it almost makes sense when you take into account that a) it also involves Henry, who he’s seen kill before and b) how much Aidan has worked to isolate Sally and Josh from his feeding. But, ultimately, Aidan needs to feed. If Josh doesn’t label targets, it’s not like Aidan won’t feed at all.

Erin’s situation is a stark one – and one that does a great job of showing some of the problems in the foster system.

I’m concerned that the storylines seem to be diverging. Sally, Aidan and Josh & Nora are moving towards more separate lives. It’s not a major thing yet and I wouldn’t comment on it if it weren’t for season 2 where we had virtually 3 separate shows forced together. I’m worried about us following the same path – because they’re excellent together. They bounce off so well as friends, snarking, joking, having fun. They’re awesome friends and it’s their lives together that made this show. Splitting them up badly damaged season 2 and season 3 started strongly partly because they were all focused on each other.

I really thought Josh was going to be scratched and become a werewolf again – you know it’s going to happen.

And we knew Donna was up to no good. Yes yes we did.